


those heavy days in june (when love became an act of defiance)

by ragesyndrome



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Minor Angst, Pride, i guess, idk how to tag, pride month, this is poorly written dont @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ragesyndrome/pseuds/ragesyndrome
Summary: it’s pride month after armageddon’t and the rain brings memories back
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	those heavy days in june (when love became an act of defiance)

**Author's Note:**

> im gay! the ex-catholic jumped out!  
> i wrote this in my journal at work and quickly typed it up on my phone, i have not proofread and any mistakes are 100% mine  
> title is from florence and the machine

He remembered the very first storm, on the walls of Eden. There had been a vicious glory in it, in Eve’s rebellion and Adam’s fearless belief in her, that Aziraphale both loved and feared. Feared, mostly, because he loved it. He learned how it felt to be the rock on which the rain falls. After six thousand years of it, you were not the same shape you started as.

It had been this way for all of human history: Aziraphale changed, slowly and incrementally. He couldn’t do it with all of Crowley’s bravado, but still, he did it.

Angels were not made for this. Rain never fell up in heaven, and Gabriel and his lot stood stoically unmarked. They worked and they thought of nothing else. Not the sweetness of chocolate melting on the tongue, not the feeling of digging your toes into soft sand, not the giddiness of spilling a little wine as you walk, not the shaking joy of discovery or the comfort of knowing someone so well you forget yourself around them. None of this, for there was only the Plan, and of course paperwork.

Aziraphale had looked more like those angels, once. It hadn’t ever suited him, but he’d tried to play the part. Some changes were inevitable; after wearing the same skin a few thousand years, it tended to carry the marks of living. His body was a home, not a temple; he did not polish it, but instead filled it with love. Other changes were deliberate - sometimes, rebellion was just a tartan bowtie, a dash of muted color on a bleached canvas. To humans in 2019, he knew it looked old-fashioned, but to all occult/ethereal forces, it was a beacon to the sky. It was a safe (maybe, hopefully safe) way to scream, one they took from him when he discorporated into heaven, into an unmarked white world.

He’d learned this from Crowley, probably - the act of creation, rejecting the projected self you’ve been given. That sort of thing didn’t fly well with his superiors. Maybe it was too much like playing God, or maybe having a sense of self was designated for mortals only. Crowley never especially believed in Lucifer any more than the Almighty, he was just too human. Or maybe it was the other way around, and humanity had learned it from the snake in the garden.

Aziraphale remembers him a different demon then, still fresh with hurt (though still far, far too kind for his own good). His eyes had been unguarded then, wild and piercing, dangerous not because he desired any violence but because he questioned. He’d been too curious to stop himself slithering up the wall, just to talk to an angel he definitely wasn’t supposed to talk to.

It was his questions that had gotten under Aziraphale’s skin, and unwittingly a home was carved out in his heart for the demon. And he could do nothing. An angel’s memories don’t age and distort the way a mortal’s do, but still he associates that time with a heavy fog, distracting himself from his fear just to survive it. Indulgences helped, wine and clams and temptations, jokes he shouldn’t have enjoyed with a demon, but allowed because it was Crowley, catching him in his yellow eyes as if asking, why not?

There was the threat of discorporation, or actual death, and so much worse than that, the threat of how much Crowley would suffer first. Why not, indeed.

Rain takes him back to the walls of Eden, and the great flood that destroyed Mesopotamia, and the wailing that kept him awake that awful night in Golgotha. A century later, the oasis where his love spilled past his lips and all over Crowley, only to be cleaned up in the morning, tucked away and unspoken of. The fog in England, and the pond they met at, and the burning note in the water and Crowley holding himself up like he wasn’t devastated. A night in the bookshop, when Aziraphale told him to stay “at least until the storm lets up”, and perhaps one of them miracled the rain to keep going; perhaps they were just lucky for once. Memories that shaped and reshaped him so many times, and he did his best to hide it all away.

For Crowley, it was different. His hair (and his gender) could change every few days, as long as his clothes were dark and looked like they’d been painted onto his skin. He still walked like a snake, like someone who hadn’t figured out what hips were and didnt know where to put all these extra limbs. In what ways he could, Crowley screamed into the void that his self, and his choices, were his alone.

It had always terrified Aziraphale, but it made him love him more.

So for six thousand years, rebellion was a tartan bowtie here, a clandestine sushi date there, countless lifetimes but every moment of them stolen. Affection barred back until it broke the dam and flooded through the night, and even then they had to lock it up again by morning. It was not all angst and anxiety, not when there was so much joy. If it had to come with the proverbial knife hanging over their heads, that was a price Aziraphale could pay, for the euphoria of being alive and in love.

After the Armageddon-That-Wasn’t, after trading faces and walking through what should have been the other’s respective destruction, rebellion was now a thing of rainbows and glitter, maybe some crop tops and certainly many laugh lines. The more colorful bars and restaurants met them with knowing looks and acceptance, when Soho was decked out for June.

Aziraphale marveled at the humans who wore their flags and remade themselves, not in God’s image but maybe something greater, in sheer resilience and self-love. Some evenings the mist coated London like a blanket, and Crowley would pack a basket with two flutes and more than a few wines, to be shared in St. James Park, silly and content.

What it came down to was that Aziraphale wasn’t particularly good at being an angel, nor Crowley at being a demon. Aziraphale was full of love, not in the detached way angels were supposed to be but wholeheartedly. He loved himself and loved Crowley and loved Earth and humanity, so intensely he thought he might explode of it. Crowley liked to talk about it as if they didn’t affect him, petty trivial humanity and the blind stubbornness with which they fought for everything, and Aziraphale would pull his sunglasses down to see how bright his eyes were. There were times he could have burst, like another nebula Crowley brought to life.

It didn’t make him afraid like it used to, this feeling that his heart was bigger than his body. He’d worn this skin through six thousand years of holding all his love and fear inside, and he didn’t have to hold it back or clean it up anymore. He loved the mess that Crowley was, and Crowley loved the mess that he was.

They left the Ritz a bit too drunk, holding hands and stupid with happiness about it, and it was all enough. They were free to have enough now, and then more.

**Author's Note:**

> now i know you’re all gonna say “we get it shay, you like metaphors and run on sentences, that doesnt make good writing” but remember im soft and gay so be kind, leave a comment if it pleases you, and thank you for reading <3


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